


oceans between you and me

by Imagineitdear



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Christmas Fluff, Cuddling & Snuggling, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Soft Stucky Week, Steve is happy to do the honors, Touch Aversion, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 00:03:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8918761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imagineitdear/pseuds/Imagineitdear
Summary: “You don’t have to, Buck. Don’t feel pressure to—”
“I’m not feeling pressure. I’m feeling . . .” Bucky bites his lip, looking down at his hands. The metal one is wringing at the flesh one, like they often do when he’s left baffled by his emotions. At the moment, a loaded cocktail of heartache, fear, anxiety and want.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For soft stucky week going on right now! Title from "Oceans" by Seafret. Because Bucky deserves a hug.

“Can I touch you?”

 

Steve whirls around from his position at the stove, eyes wide. There’s a streak of chocolate on his cheekbone.

 

Bucky wants to lick it off. He wants to do a lot of things, but yesterday Steve carried in a pine tree, nose red and cheeks pink as his lips as he hauled it through the living room, and the sight left Bucky breathless. Not to mention the patterned sweater he then put on, that for once was big even for Steve, making his shoulders and chest and arms look . . . soft, not so hard or life-threatening.

 

Bucky knows they still could be. But he also knows that, if Steve were ever to fight him again, it would only be to protect him from himself. (Or because he deserved it? Bucky tries not to think like that, especially because agreeing he didn’t deserve what happened to him puts the biggest smile on Steve’s face.)

 

Steve asked JARVIS to start a playlist of his, and they passed the Christmas lights to each other from either side of the tree and hung up ornaments listening to Bing Crosby and Kenny Baker. Steve didn’t ask Bucky if he recognized the singers, though, and maybe it didn’t matter. 

 

Maybe, all that matters, is each new moment. Like this one.

 

Steve also made hot chocolate afterwards, blowing on Bucky’s cup before handing it over to him. He was careful to leave room for Bucky’s hands when offering the mug, to avoid touching. And Bucky appreciates it. He really does. He’s not sure he can let Steve touch him—but seeing him even this moment, with a streak of chocolate on his face and his eyes so wide with surprise, Bucky knows he can let himself touch Steve. 

 

But only if he says yes. “Steve?” Bucky asks when the man doesn’t reply. “Would that be . . .?”

 

“Oh! Yes,” Steve blurts out, cheeks reddening, and he quickly drops his wooden spoon on the counter. “Yes, that’s fine, that’s . . . how do you want me?” 

 

He says it in a rush, earnest, but Bucky hadn’t really thought that far into this. How exactly should he touch him? Where should he touch him? Should he merely touch, or hug, or even kiss? Should he have not mentioned it in the first place, just brushed against Steve’s skin casually the next time the opportunity arises?

 

But Steve is so big on communication now. Bucky doesn’t remember that from before, either because his memory is still shit or because Steve wasn’t until he let a brainwashed assassin move in with him. Either way, Bucky still forgets sometimes to  _ tell  _ Steve things, like that running into new people with no warning makes him nauseous, that dogs scare him, that his nightmares get worse after watching action flicks. 

 

He genuinely feels better, after saying it. Steve helps figure out a solution, and life goes on. But this time, Bucky is at a bit of a loss. “I’m not sure,” he admits, shuffling anxiously from foot to foot. Steve’s expression steadies.

 

“You don’t have to, Buck. Don’t feel pressure to—”

 

“I’m not feeling  _ pressure _ . I’m feeling . . .” Bucky bites his lip, looking down at his hands. The metal one is wringing at the flesh one, like they often do when he’s left baffled by his emotions. At the moment, a loaded cocktail of heartache, fear, anxiety and  _ want _ .

 

He's still not used to feeling any emotions, much less so many at once.

 

“Yeah?” Steve asks softly, taking one step closer. Just barely closer, but his bones feel the proximity lessen even by this tiny degree.

 

‘I want to,” Bucky finally decides. He looks up at Steve properly, and it’s like squinting at the sun. He can barely make out Steve’s individual features, he’s so overwhelmed by the light of his existence. According to his shit memory, that’s never changed. Bucky takes a step forward himself, and now there’s barely a step between them now. Distance Steve could easily cross—but he doesn’t. 

 

It’s up to Bucky to move into this.

 

He takes that last step, and reaches out his flesh hand. It brushes feather-light against Steve’s collar, and the apron’s loop around the man’s neck. Work up to it. Bucky traces it gently, leaning further forward, and Steve sucks in a breath. When Bucky places two very gentle fingertips against the other man’s pulse, Steve’s eyes shut close.

 

Bucky lets his fingers travel up, meeting the jaw that was always sharp but never so chiseled before the serum, prickled stubble scraping against them. It’s amazing. Bucky almost can forget how his metal hand almost succeeded in ruining this face, how his hands have been weapons of violent touch longer than they’ve been anything else. 

 

With Hydra, Bucky forgot the good things. 

 

With Steve, he forgets the bad.

 

He sidles in a little closer, daring enough to press his full palm against Steve’s face. Steve still has his eyes closed, but he smiles, and Bucky quickly moves to trace that before it disappears. The fullness of his lips, the bump in his nose, his straight, dark brows. Finally, the streak of chocolate—Steve was making fudge, it seems—that Bucky makes sure not to rub away. 

 

“I’m afraid,” Bucky whispers, barely loud enough to hear even in their close proximity. He didn’t mean to. But he did mean it, in a way—his heart is beating frantically, his mind is running in frantic circles. But his hand is settled into the short hair at the back of Steve’s head, relaxed and threaded into the strands.

 

Steve’s blue, blue eyes open, too close. Bucky has to blink a little to adjust to them. “I won’t touch you,” he promises. Bucky’s heart sinks.

 

“No, that’s not why,” he tells him, and rests their foreheads together. His metal arm whirs, betraying his frustration, and Bucky clenches his fist to keep it still. “I’m afraid—I’m worried. I. I keep thinking, I’m going to hurt you again.”

 

“You’d never—”

 

“I  _ did _ , Steve.” Bucky traces the places where red gashes used to be, where he broke Steve’s cheekbone. Recognition flickers in Steve’s eyes.

 

“Did you want to?” he asks guilelessly, and Bucky’s heart plummets further.

 

“What? No . . . I’d never—” Bucky cuts off, can’t finish, can’t fathom the idea of  _ wanting  _ to kill Steve, or harm him in any way. 

 

Steve smiles, radiating happiness. Sun breaking through the clouds. “Exactly.”

 

Bucky gets it. And it doesn’t really change anything. But suddenly, being so close to Steve now—none of this is enough. He should have known, taken a lesson from so many pages of his history that when Bucky Barnes touched Steve Rogers he would always want  _ more.  _

 

Some things will never change.

 

Bucky’s head falls, and he rests it on Steve’s shoulder, soft muscle against the bridge of his nose. A small shudder runs through the other man, but he otherwise stays perfectly still. “Just . . . just, hold me. Please,” Bucky breathes against Steve’s collarbones. 

 

He’s not sure he wants Steve to hear it. What if Steve doesn’t want to? What if he touches the metal arm? What if Bucky can’t handle any of it?

 

But he can’t handle the space between them anymore, either. He waits, tense, and when he feels Steve start to move he holds his breath. Slight pressure, at two points on Bucky’s back, which he realises are hands, is followed by the rest of Steve’s warm arms loosely encircling him.

 

“Is this alright?” Steve whispers.

 

Bucky finally releases that breath, but it comes out as a sob. 

 

So do the rest, and when Steve tries to pull away Bucky wraps both his arms around the other man, squeezing probably too hard. But Steve’s arms come back, tighter, and he quietly lets Bucky sob and ruin his shirt with salt water.

 

Courtesy of his shit memory, Bucky has literally no idea the last time someone touched him like this. But he knows for sure that he took it for granted then, this feeling of hope and love and safety.

 

When Bucky is done, he says, “Sorry,” but Steve shushes him. Steve moves them to the couch, where Bucky has spent many a frustrated night sitting on the opposite side of Steve, wanting to close the distance, but never daring. Now he lets Steve guide him blind, face still tucked against the taller man’s neck. 

 

“I love you, ya know,” Steve says simply, once they’re laying down with Bucky arranged on top of him. Bucky lifts his head, surprised—not of the fact, but that Steve just said it out loud. Bucky’s always known. But maybe, just maybe, saying it out loud means something else. Something more.

 

“Me too, pal,” he dares to say now, “in every way there is.”

 

“Every way?” Steve asks dubiously, but his eyes are bright with—hope? Could Bucky’s eyes be deceiving him?

 

He’s loved Steve in ways he knew were righteous and good, in ways he’d thought were perverted and wrong. He’s loved Steve through seventy years of forgetting him. He’s loved Steve when his very brain had been programmed to kill him..

 

But maybe now’s not the time for this—maybe this new moment could be enough for now. The crazy thing is, for the first time in their lives together, tomorrow is a certain thing. No pnuemonia, world war, or brainwashing to stop them. And Bucky wants to focus on the arms around him, not what they do or do not mean. 

  
So Bucky just nods and lays his head back down against Steve’s chest. Steve sighs, not unhappily, and pulls him in closer.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! My tumblr is [trynabucky](trynabucky.tumblr.com), just so it's out there.


End file.
